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While impressive from an engineering point of view (and a sheer "how badass can we get?" POV), the fact that they needed to use liquid helium to run the cpu at 7 GHz is more proof that we're heading for a massively multicore future - at least until another set of materials to replace silicon and aluminium gets in widespread use and which can run faster without getting hotter. I think we'll see 80-core x86 chips first, though.
And daqman - I can sympathize! I worked in a plasma physics lab in college, and we used a lot of liquid nitrogen and helium both, and while liquid nitrogen was fun (a colleague froze a slug at one point, and I took a thermos back to a party to pour into a punch-bowl, etc), the liquid helium was tough to work with. Not to mention time-consuming, since filling a dewar meant a *massive* amount of super-cold "fog" coming out of that flexible metal pipe from the big tank, and then air was always freezing onto the rim of the dewar (and I got some pink skin a few times, but never actual frostbite, doh!)
@Ninety-9: True - and I'm not saying we'll *never* see 7 GHz speeds in consumer CPUs. But my high-end notebook in 2004 had a 1.8 GHz CPU, and in 2009, high-end notebooks still are in the 2.0 - 2.5 GHz range. Five years later. So we're not seeing the dramatic increases in clock-speeds we did from the 90 MHz chips up to the 2 GHz ones (that's a 22-fold increase in 10 years, vs maybe 20% increase over the next five years). Desktop CPUs have followed similar trends (drastic increase in clock speeds from 1995 - 2005, then modest speed bumps, with proliferating cores).
So unless there's a materials-science breakthrough, I doubt we'll see 7 GHz before 2015, if then (more likely we'll see 16-core and 32-core CPUs then instead). #amd7ghz
There was a shot of someone pushing a transfer line into a helium dewar with a glove on one hand and the other glove held in his teeth. I remember back in the summer of nineteen ahem, cough that long ago, when I was the only person in Liverpool treated for frostbite. I was doing the same thing with a transfer line when a jet of helium gas at minus bloody cold degrees centifroid hit me across the knuckles. It was funny at first to see frost on the skin. Half an hour later it was red and stinging. An hour later the blisters were forming. Then off to occupational health to try to persuade them it was frostbite in June. It was a lot of fun though... great story to tell the kids. #amd7ghz
@Software_Goddess: I've been solidly in the AMD camp for many, many years myself. I've never been anti-Intel, but I always appreciated lower-cost alternatives who tried harder to innovate. I even used to build my own systems with Cyrix processors, back in the day. #amd7ghz
Except they ban for memes like that now, so Giz doesn't really "like their cheesy jokes and memes" after seeing the same thing a million times. #amd7ghz
11/15/09
And daqman - I can sympathize! I worked in a plasma physics lab in college, and we used a lot of liquid nitrogen and helium both, and while liquid nitrogen was fun (a colleague froze a slug at one point, and I took a thermos back to a party to pour into a punch-bowl, etc), the liquid helium was tough to work with. Not to mention time-consuming, since filling a dewar meant a *massive* amount of super-cold "fog" coming out of that flexible metal pipe from the big tank, and then air was always freezing onto the rim of the dewar (and I got some pink skin a few times, but never actual frostbite, doh!)
11/17/09
11/18/09
So unless there's a materials-science breakthrough, I doubt we'll see 7 GHz before 2015, if then (more likely we'll see 16-core and 32-core CPUs then instead). #amd7ghz
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11/13/09
<3 #amd7ghz
11/13/09
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Does it matter when it can do what I just demonstrated? Also, I think I can hear someone screaming "BANHAMMER." #amd7ghz
11/13/09
But will it blend? #amd7ghz
11/14/09
Except they ban for memes like that now, so Giz doesn't really "like their cheesy jokes and memes" after seeing the same thing a million times. #amd7ghz
11/13/09
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11/14/09